


The Sound of Settling - DCVerse Ficlet #1

by DyrneKeeper



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-18
Updated: 2012-06-18
Packaged: 2017-11-28 18:02:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/677274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DyrneKeeper/pseuds/DyrneKeeper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After his rejection from NYADA, Kurt gets a second chance at NYC. But is New York still where he belongs?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sound of Settling - DCVerse Ficlet #1

**Title** : The Sound of Settling - DC Verse Ficlet #1  
 **Rating** : PG  
 **Pairings/Characters** : Kurt/Blaine, Burt  
 **Spoilers** : All of S3 is fair game.  
 **Warnings** : None  
 **Word Count** : 2.000

Summary: After his rejection from NYADA, Kurt gets a second chance at NYC. But is New York still where he belongs?

A/N: I was practically raised on _The West Wing_. That show hooked me on politics and snappy dialogue and Making People’s Lives Better, and I’m just glad that TWW was running when I was in high school and not Glee, because if Glee had hooked me then god knows what I’d be trying to make of my life. I can write policy papers. I can _not_ act, dance, or sing. When Burt got elected to Congress I struggled with all sorts of crossover fantasies because _I do not write crossover fic_ , no matter _how_ amazing it would be to put Kurt and CJ in a room together and watch the snark and fashion sense fly. But. I've been working on some version or other of this ‘verse for _months_ , and it had been intended as an AU until Goodbye provided the perfect opportunity to connect it to canon (one more reason, in my book, to love the S3 finale.) And so, with that verbosity out of the way, let’s set the stage with a ficlet!

 

  
*

When Kurt wakes up, it takes him a moment to get his bearings. Even before he opens his eyes he knows something is off, and he makes himself feel through his body, flexing his toes in the rough texture of the sheets, the warmth of the sunlight at an unfamiliar angle across his face, before he lets himself open his eyes.

“Good morning, kiddo.”

Right.

Kurt groans and pulls the sheet up higher, but the bed dips as his dad sits down and pats his leg. “Hey, none of that! You made the schedule, you can get up early too. Come share the pain.”

Kurt mutters again before he tosses the blankets back, and fixes his dad with a glare that would be much more effective if he weren’t still half asleep.

“Come on, Kurt. Rise and shine. The early bird gets the - “

“Dad!” Kurt glares again but the effect is ruined by the laugh. “Do _not_ finish that sentence. Please.”

Burt just chuckles and pats his leg again before standing up. “Your sneaks are by the door. If you’re out the door in the next five minutes I’ll let you make those heart-healthy pancakes for breakfast.”

“Twenty minutes.”

“Ten.”

“Fifteen.”

“Fifteen minutes, kiddo. I’m starting the clock!”

Kurt closes his eyes and gives himself one last moment of resting on the dubious comfort of the fold-out bed, and then gets up.

*

It really is a beautiful morning, and it’s kind of disgusting that a month like March should get such warm sunshine, such gentle breezes, such brisk and trilling birdsong when New York is still buried under the remnants of a late-February blizzard. His dad sets the pace and Kurt lets him, isn’t eager to run any races this early in the day anyway. The streets are mostly in shadow, the queer glassy half-illuminated light cast by shaded buildings and the sunlight reflected down off of the higher stories. After a couple of blocks Kurt’s broken a sweat but his skin is still chilly in the cool air, and he’s glad when they finally cross 14th and break out into the sun near the Ellipse.

They’re not the only joggers out at this hour; DC is an early-rising city, even on weekends, and Kurt nods and his dad grunts at the runners whose paths they cross. They follow the path Kurt had traced last night on Google Maps, past the Monument, down the gentle slope to the water and the still-bare cherry trees. Kurt hasn’t seen them in bloom yet, and still isn’t convinced the Cherry Blossom Festival isn’t just another tacky touristy event. He still likes the Tidal Basin and its open blue water, how it never seems to be as hot or crowded as the Mall. His dad slides in front of him as they politely jostle past another running pair, and a ducks swims lazily past almost by Kurt’s ankle, head tilted as if he’s assessing whether they have any bread.

They stop to stretch at the Jefferson, and Kurt gives them five minutes before he takes off again, in the lead this time, following the undulating path as it winds between the water and the FDR memorial, and then the MLK. This route always looks shorter than it is and Kurt pushes through the strain in his legs, the twinge in his lungs.

By the time they get to the bridge Kurt is uncomfortably damp, and the welcome sunshine has turned too hot on the back of his neck. He’s glad to drop back into a walk, trying to keep his pace steady, and checking over his shoulder for his dad to catch up with him. Except for the rumble of early-morning traffic over the bridge it’s quiet, and even the street noise isn’t really engaging to listen to. He’d left his iPod back at the apartment, telling himself that he’d use the run to think, to churn over new ideas, but instead his thoughts are just drifting, aimless, and his mind feels uncomfortably blank. He’s not used to having nothing to worry over, to not having project after project lined up and planned out with color-coordinating schedules marching through the months of his planner. This semester he’s been so good at losing himself in work, in making up for lost time, and the stress had been easy to deal with with the justification of _this is what I have to do; this is what I am achieving with my life_ that without work he just feels pointless, aimless, a waste of space as he’s killing time. It’s just a week for now but when the semester is over it’s going to be all summer, and Kurt already dreads it. He’d been rejected for a summer internship at school, and it doesn’t matter that everyone who had been accepted were going to be juniors or seniors, it just feels like one more setback in a long string of nos.

He’s been here for a day and already his dad is trying to get him out of the funk that had settled as soon as the train had pulled out of Penn Station, outlining projects and talking about initiatives he’s working on, offering to bring Kurt around his office and introduce him to people, to his staff, to interns his age and aides who are interested in his issues (as if they are issues which belong to him, or that he has claimed). Even thinking about taking on any work here just doesn’t feel right. His energy _should_ be being spent in New York, where he’d been so lucky to score a second chance. Anything else feels like a waste, or like settling.

His dad finally catches up with him before he reaches the end of the bridge. “Who would have thought,” he says, sweeping his gaze from the towering Monument on their left to the imposing columns across the water from. “Back when you first tried out for glee club, that we’d ever end up here?”

“Not me.”Kurt gives a weak smile and dabs the sweat off his forehead with the sleeve of his t-shirt. He’s tried, he has, but the narrative never seems so clear or obvious or inevitable in his head as it apparently does to his father. Glee to Mr. Schue to Coach Sylvester and bullying and an open seat and an election; it’s easy when it’s laid out in speeches. Kurt has given some of them himself. But when he thinks about the last three years those aren’t the things that come to mind. It’s lazy weekends with his family, the scuffed floor of the McKinley stage, Blaine’s dark warm room, the low late-afternoon sun stretched over the school parking lot after practice. The everyday, not the anomalies, that composed his life, are what lingered, but it’s the anomalies, now, that are writing the score.

“Hey. Kurt.” His dad stops him with a hand on his shoulder, and Kurt has to squint into the sun to see his face. “What’s up with you?”

Kurt shrugs.

“Full of ennui again?”

Kurt has to laugh at that. “Something like that.”

“When’s Blaine getting in?”

“Tomorrow at six.” Kurt pushes damp hair out of his face, and the smile this time gets stronger. The one bright spot of this whole wretched week; they haven’t seen each other in a month and so what if it just a handful of days in his dad’s DC apartment? Kurt can’t _wait._

“Do you think you can make it out to the airport on your own? I should be free by then, but if the meeting with Sawyer goes late -”

“I’ll be fine, Dad.”

“Just, ‘cause, last time you tried to get to National you ended up in Maryland somehow - “

“Dad!” Kurt nudges him with an elbow, but he’s laughing now, and his dad looks brighter too. “That was only once! And it could have happened to anyone.”

“Yeah, anyone who didn’t bother to check what line they were getting on - or what _direction_ \- “

Kurt swats at his dad again, but the smile they exchange is fond, and in the warmth of it the city seems a little less strange, less foreign and threatening. Kurt takes a deep breath and takes another look at the Mall as they cross it again, trying to see it as Blaine will, when they come back here in a few days. The marble is too-bright in the rapidly rising sun, and Kurt should really bring his sunglasses, tomorrow. Tonight he’ll send Blaine a list of the museums and a map of the Mall and they’ll work out an itinerary and then as soon as they get here on Tuesday they’ll wander into the first building that catches their eye and forget all about the schedule. They never do stop trying to plan, though.

Back at the apartment Kurt’s dad lets him use the shower first while he starts cutting up fruit, and when Kurt gets out he takes over with the pancake batter, buckwheat and blueberries while the sun climbs higher and starts to angle itself over the little porch. They eat outside while the silence of the early city morning slides into the quiet Sunday hum, and the battered old boombox that used to live on a shelf at the garage pumps out staticky classical. It’s the way classical music should be listened too, Kurt thinks. When he was little there had been so many weekend mornings like this, listening to the radio while his mom gardened or his dad raked leaves, that the distorted notes from feeble speakers are soft, and comfortable, the way old flannel smooths and warms from overuse.

His dad frowns over the Sunday _Post_ crossword and Kurt’s phone beeps in his pocket. He smiles when he sees Blaine’s name on the screen. _Good morning baby! Tomorrow!!!_ He replies, _Good morning :) Can’t wait :)_. A robin trills loudly from a branch nearby, and Burt creases the paper and scratches in a word.

“What do you have planned for the day?”

Kurt slips the phone back in his pocket (Blaine had sent back _:D <3_, because he is twelve occasionally). “I thought I’d go through some of your files at the office.”

“On a Sunday?”

Kurt gives his dad a look. “When I told Maisie I was going to be in town for a week, I thought she was going to cry from relief. And then she sent me a picture of your desk. I think I need as early a start as I can get. You kept the garage together for years - why is this so hard?”

On a Sunday, there won’t be anyone wandering the halls, wanting to speak to him, to ask the plainspoken blue-collar congressman’s fashion-fabulous son how the big city is treating him, and won’t he consider a semester in Washington? They remember what Kurt did for the campaign and so-and-so is looking for interns, they’d be happy to recommend...

Burt gives him a look right back. “Are you sure everything’s okay with you, Kurt?”

Kurt pushes his chair back and begins collecting their plates. “Of course.” He slides the porch door open with his elbow, and stacks the plates by the sink. He cooked, his dad can wash up. Outside a new song starts on the radio. Bach, he thinks. Kurt calls through the open door, “Is there anything you want me to pick up while I’m there?”

His dad just looks at him from his seat at the table, paper creased neatly on his knee. “Naw, I grabbed everything I needed Thursday. Oh! Water the plants? Jamie said they were looking a little sad.”

“Sure.”

It’s still not too hot out, so Kurt slides the screen door closed instead of the heavy glass door. His bag is on the floor next to the couch, and he flips up the flap to make sure he’s got his ID badge.

“Don’t work too hard!” his dad calls from the porch, as Kurt double checks his pockets for his phone and his keys.

“I won’t, Dad. Love you!”

“Love you too. Give me a call when you’re on your way home.”

“‘Kay, bye!”

“See you later, kiddo.”

<>  



End file.
